About

Reviews on this site are personal overviews by the webmistress, Splash. I’m a female in my late 20s, working as a vendor for a certain high tech company that is awesome (but still seeking better opportunities).

I have a lot of personal biases like any other person of course, but I’ll try to point them out when I can. As a general note, my biases tend to favor the audio experience and personal entertainment. Since this is my own review site, I won’t be afraid to bash whatever I find displeasing and you can take it or leave it.

Also, I tend to leave a lot of “bookmark” posts where I’ll just put down a game I haven’t finished played yet and will fill it up later.

I mostly play RPGs, Otome and BL games, in Japanese. Occasional other pieces like Gyakuten Saiban, rhythm, puzzle games. I have close to zero interest in reviewing fps, sports, racing, party, etc games. I’m an English native, but I’m fluent in Japanese and just prefer my games in Japanese. I do play some games in English, usually with my husband. Please don’t come whining to me about games I play that aren’t available in English, because you’re already failing the point of this site if you do.

10-count rating system, with 10 being the highest. I generally don’t bother reviewing anything I’ll give less than a 5 anyway, but there could be a terrible exception later down the line, who knows. XD; Also, I rate with a mix of relation to the console’s capabilities as a whole and my personal experience with the game.
6/10 is my general score for games that aren’t exactly CANCER but ones that can be totally passed without regret. I wouldn’t recommend playing anything with that score or lower. Please, if you want my respect, then spend your time with the better scoring games unless you really spend as much time as I do playing games in general. XD; (I can average a good 4-5 hours a day and even more on weekends…)

Console history:
-I grew up with my parents strictly forbidding me to own any game consoles/games. I’d only get to play games at other people’s places… and Best Buy. Asian parties were great when the other kids had games to watch/play. Trips to Best Buy were like heaven for me because I could then spend hours playing Yoshi’s Island on SNES or Mario Land/Kart on N64. Those were the days. I did get quite a luxury when it came to computers, however, so in high school I had my MMORPG era with Ragnarok Online. Soooo much wasted time.
-My dad randomly got me a Pikachu edition N64 and hand-me-down SNES around my senior year of high school, like 5 years after N64 was released. By then I was emulating both N64 and SNES on my computer anyway. I did get some fine moments playing the Hey You Pikachu game on the N64 at least.
-2005 – Nintendo DS – Bought my first game console ever in college with my parents not constantly checking me under their radar.
-2006 – DS Lite – followed the year or so after.
-2007 – PS3 – Technically, my dad bought this as the family bluray player. Fat PS3 with an upgraded 500gb HD. He had it hooked up to the giant projector in the basement theater, so I played my early PS3 titles on a MASSIVE screen pfft. He later let me take the PS3 when I moved out to the west coast in 2011.
-2008 – PSP-1000 – Got a hand-me-down PSP-1000 from relative, already with cfw. Accidentally brought it back with me from China, but he had another 1000 model anyway and pretty much never played @.@;
-2009 – Wii – Bought a used Wii, maybe from Amazon? For less than $100 shipped. Bought a good amount of accessories for it too. Happened to come with the firmware that made softmodding it easier. Pretty smooth after doing a whole bunch of complicated reading on how to get it softmodded.
-2009 – PS2 – Bought a used PS2 off my friend for $100 shipped. Had a friend hook me up with the softmod memory card. It’s kind of a quirky machine though and doesn’t work half the time. But eh, now I can emulate PS2 on PC anyway… @.@;
-2010 – PSP-2000 – Got a second hand-me-down PSP… a 2000 model already with cfw. Great timing since the 1000 model permadied not long after (I had already had its motherboard replaced once)
-2011 – 3DS – Got mine just before they announced the price-drop in July of that year…
-2012 – 3DS (Fire Emblem) – I paid too much for this w Its sole benefit is that I never bothered to upgrade the firmware, so it was just at the 4.5 ver I needed to run Gateway on it.
-2012 – Vita – I got the 3G bundle for less than $200 brand new. Compare that to the $700 I spent to get 2 Japanese 3DSes– my wallet probably wants to shoot me for that.
-2013 – Vita TV – Had my friend in Japan help get this for me when it was first released, although she wasn’t able to ship it to me until late January lol…
-2014 – Slim PS3 – The fat received the YLOD, so I got it repaired, fan modded but didn’t want to risk it dying again, so I got a “used” 250gb slim from Cowboom for $130 and transferred everything. Still haven’t decided what to do with the old 500GB fat, since it’s still usable… (for now fiance is using it since his also got YLOD)
-2014 – PS4 – This is my fiance’s, but it’s not like I’ll have any desire to play things on it for a long time… XD;;
-2014 – Wii U – Not long after Black Friday, a Wii U bundle with Nintendoland, Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, and Super Mario 3D World coincides with an old trade-in at Best Buy to land us a GREAT deal.
-2016 – Android – Got Samsung Galaxy S7 on first release, came with the Gear VR. I had the Sky S2 and S4 before this, but this is where I’ll start mentioning it as a gaming device… for reasons.
-2017 – Switch – The year I get married is the year of the Switch! We now finally have our own place to call home too. Hubby bought this one, I intend to get my own hopefully when a Fire Emblem/Pokemon special edition comes out, or a good sale at the very least.

For the measure, here are my current top Tales games based on OVERALL EXPERIENCE. I have different things to say about characters/battle system/story/graphics/whatnot:
1. Graces F
2. Vesperia
3. Xillia/Xillia 2
4. Rebirth
5. Destiny 2
6. Hearts (R)/Innocence (R)/Abyss/whatever else.
The characters and story for Symphonia really never got my interest (and I wish they didn’t make so many OVAs for that title… the other titles deserve to be animated so much more. At least Abyss has a fairly nice TV series).